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Truck Farming 
in Philadelphia County 




ISSUED BY 

THE EDUCATIONAL COMMITTEE 

OF THE 

PHILADELPHIA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 



Urtopograjih. 



PRESENTED TO THE 
SCHOOLS OF PHILADELPHIA 

BY 

THE PHILADELPHIA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 

D. of D. 

FEB 28 1918 



Educational Pamphlet No. 5, issued by the Educational Committee 
of the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. 



Copyright, 1917, Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. 



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Truck Farming in Philadelphia County 

By ALBERT W. DUDLEY 



Those of us who live in the heart of the great city of Philadelphia 
can scarcely realize that about one-third of the area of Philadelphia 
County is under cultivation. Few of us know that about thirty thousand 
acres of Philadelphia land are devoted to the raising of many kinds of 
vegetables, fruits, poultry, live stock and dairy products. 

The farm land is mostly found north of Frankford, in the neighbor- 
hood of Holmesburg, Bustleton, Somerton, Fox Chase and Olney, and 
also in the southern part of our city. These latter farms, however, are 
rapidly being sold for building lots, so that the northeastern part of 
Philadelphia is now the principal farming area. 

The farms of Philadelphia are worth more than twenty-eight 
millions of dollars, and the crops are worth annually about two millions 
of dollars. The farmers of Philadelphia raise celery, lettuce, beets, 
potatoes, carrots, turnips, com, sugar corn, tomatoes, peppers, rhubarb, 
asparagus,- radishes, cucumbers, egg plant, parsnips, parsley, onions, 
wheat, chickens, eggs, apples, pears, peaches, strawberries and many 
other articles. 

The dairy products are worth $166,191 yearly ; the poultry is worth 
$82,975 ; cereals are worth $126,170 ; hay is worth $506,573 ; fruits are 
worth $167,688, and vegetables are worth $249,243. The farm machinery 
is worth $540,509; the farm animals are worth $519,991. There are 
3,524 cows, 2,233 horses, 6,737 hogs, 136 sheep and 29 goats on Phila- 
delphia farms. The annual farm expenses amount to $635,890, of 
which $154,989 is spent for rent, $118,055 for fertilizers, and $176,200 
is spent for feed. (See Plate I.) 

You may want to know what becomes of all this quantity of food. 
The farmer or huckster who sells produce to your mother from his 
wagon carries many articles raised within the border of our own city. 
It is impossible to tell how much of this two million dollars' worth of 
produce is peddled around the streets by the farmer and huckster. 



Truck Farming in Philadelphia County 



Probably every boy and girl has gone to a real market house where 
farmers bring their vegetables on Tuesdays and Fridays. There are 
just twenty-five such market houses in Philadelphia. It is indeed a 
sight on market days to see the farmers drive up with their heavily 
loaded wagons, unload them and spread out their produce on their 
stands. Then come men, women and children with empty baskets, buy 
the farmers' vegetables and carry their heavy baskets back home again. 
Then the farmer pockets his money, loads up his wagon with empty 




fM^mmiL:^i^ •»■> r':;&igst "g ^ 



Plate I. Courtesy of Henry F. Michell Co. 

After grass has been cut and dried, it is thrown into the wagon with a hay loader 

as the team goes around the field. 



boxes and drives home to raise more and get ready for next market day. 
This is too interesting a sight to have been missed by any boy or girl. 
Most of these market houses are now owned by private individuals and 
companies, to whom the farmer must pay rent just as other people pay 
rent for their stores and homes. There is, however, a market house in 
the middle of North Second Street, and another in the middle of South 
Second Street, which are owned by the city. Formerly there were many 
of these street markets. One was located in the middle of Market 
Street, another in the middle of Spring Garden Street, another on Girard 
Avenue. The Mercantile . Library on Tenth below Market Street was 



Truck Farming in Philadelphia County 



formerly a market house, as you can readily see by looking at its peculiar 
market house architecture. Where market houses are too far away, the 
city allows the farmers to have a curb market; that is, the farmers 
unload their vegetables on the sidewalks and sell to those who pass. 
We have seven of these curb markets in Philadelphia. In addition to 
these markets we have the Vine Street Wharf at Front and Callowhill 
Streets, and the Dock Street Wharf at Front and Dock Streets. If 
you happen to be at either of these places at one or two o'clock in the 
morning, you will see hundreds of heavily laden truck wagons unloading 
at the commission merchants' stores, hucksters and storekeepers biisily 
engaged buying from the great stacks of foods, and hucksters' and 
grocers' wagons of all kinds as busily loading up this food to be carried 
all over Philadelphia. 




Plate II. Chinese way of drilling wheat. 

Two men pull the crude drill. The men behind shakes out the seed. A single man with a modern 

American power wheat drill can plant twenty rows at a time. 



You must not suppose that all of the vegetables that we eat are 
raised by the farmers of Philadelphia. Probably less than half is so 
raised. We get food also from other farms near Philadelphia. All 
night long Jerseymen are crossing the ferries with their loads of truck. 
Besides this, train loads of food are daily coming into Philadelphia from 
the South and from the West. Indeed, you can thus readily see that 
the Philadelphia farmers raise but a small part of what you and I eat. 

We may say, however, that "our farmers" are among the most 
scientific and best in America if not in the whole world. One farmer 
with only eight acres of land raises a big two-horse load of truck every 



Truck Farming in Philadelphia County 



day. Another trucker with one hundred acres of land raises a thousand 
dollars' worth of truck every week, and keeps fifty men constantly 
employed. Another truck company raises so much truck that it keeps 
its own wholesale store to sell the same. 

Suppose we visit one of these hundred-acre truck farms near 
Holmesburg. Let us suppose that it is the beginning of April. The 
stable manure already has been spread over the ground. The usual 
amount for trucking is about one carload per acre. The ground is being 
plowed to a depth of about eight inches. The plow is made that the 
manure is completely '^turned under" for the roots to feed on later. 
A roller is crushing the bigger clods of earth and an acme harrow is 
pulverizing the soil. A man is drilling in seeds with a drill which may 
be so regulated as to plant seeds at any distance apart. (See Plate II 
and III.) 




Plate III. A modern American hand drill planting onion seed. 
Modern drills plant seed any depth, any distance apart, in rows or in hills. 



If we return in a couple of weeks we will see the men at work 
hoeing out the weeds and thinning out the plants where they are 
crowded too closely together. Others will be pulling and bunching 
radishes, onions and rhubarb, or cutting lettuce and spinach. Still later 
they will be pulling beets, carrots and turnips, and picking peas, beans, 
potatoes, berries, etc. On rainy days we find the men out in the rain 
planting cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes and celery. The crops are constantly 
cultivated with various kinds of cultivators which are pulled up and 
down the rows by horses or hoed by hand. ( See Plates IV and V. ) This 



Truck Farming in Philadelphia County 




Plate IV. Cultivating Beets with Wheel Hoes. 




Plate V. Cultivating Rhubarb. 



Truck Farming in Philadelphia County 




Plate VI. Hilling up earth around Celery to bleach it. 



is done in moist weather to kill weeds, for a good farmer never lets his 
weeds get very large or go to seed. The seeds will lie in the ground and 
make weeds next year. In dry weather the farmer cultivates his vege- 
tables to keep the ground loose. This keeps the moisture from evapo- 
rating. If we come back in the fall of the year, we will find the farmer 
"banking" away his turnips, carrots, celery, etc., and clearing up for 
another year. (See Plate VI.) 

Formerly our truckers had thousands of hot bed sash under which 
they raised lettuce, radishes, parsley and pansies in winter and early 
spring. They also raised their early plants for planting in the fields in 
April and May. But now the trucker of the South can raise his vege- 
tables in the open and ship them in refrigerator cars more cheaply 
than the Philadelphia trucker can raise his under glass. He, however, 
still keeps a feAV sash. Indeed, many truckers are now raising fine cut 
flowers and plants in hot houses heated by steam. The beautiful roses 
and carnations that we see during the winter, and the plants at Easter 
time are raised in these hot houses or green houses as they are sometimes 
called. 

"Within the last five years another change has come over our local 
farming. Our truck farmers used to lose valuable crops in dry weather. 
Now, however, many of them are irrigating by the overhead method. 
In the dry parts of the West, the farmers let the water run over the 
land through ditches. Philadelphia truckers run overhead pipes and 
turn on the water so that it sprinkles the ground as rain does. This 



Truck Farming in Philadelphia County 




Plate VII. Overhead Irrigation. 



practice saves so many crops and has become so profitable that the area 
of irrigated land near Philadelphia has doubled within the last year, 
(See Plate VII.) 

In this connection it may be well to say something about the value 
of stable manure. Some people think that manure contains a great 
amount of plant food, but this is not the case. It contains very little. 
Its chief value is to hold the water in the soil for the plants to draw 
on. "When the manure is thoroughly mixed with the soil, the soil 
becomes spongy and will absorb and hold moisture much better for the 
supply of the fine roots. 

Really most of our plant foods are already in the soil. The three 
plant foods are potash, nitrogen and phosphoric acid. Most soils con- 
tain sufficient potash. Huge quantities of potash, however, are imported 
from Germany. Nitrogen is extracted from the air by little plants that 
live at the roots of clovers, beans and peas. It is also taken from the 
air by electricity, and is imported in the form of sodium nitrate from 
Chile. It may be interesting to note that sodium nitrate when treated 
with potash becomes nitrate of potash, which is used in the manufacture 
of gun powder. The phosphoric acid is obtained by treating bones, or 
the mineral apatite found in the South, with sulphuric acid. Not more 
than one or two hundred pounds of any of these plant foods is necessary 
per acre of ground. 

You and I can scarcely realize how much we are indebted to the 
modern trucker for the food we eat. A hundred years ago, except in 
the summer time, everybody lived almost altogether on bread, meat, eggs. 



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Truck Fakming in Philadelphia County 



milk products and dried beans. Today we are supplied with fresh vege- 
tables and fruits every day, and at a very much less relative cost than 
formerly. 

To be sure our modern truckers do not have to work nearly so hard 
as, did their fathers. They know better how to truck and every conceiv- 
able kind of tool has been invented to lighten their labors. (See Plates 
VIII, IX, X and XI.) An intelligent industrious trucker may make a 
good income and live in a very comfortable manner. 

Perhaps you would like to be a trucker. If you will learn every 
detail of trucking and are willing to work hard and save your money, 
you can own a farm in a very few years. 



[Plates II to XI inclusive, are printed through the courtesy of the 
Philadelphia firm of S. L. Allen & Co., one of the largest manufacturers 
of farm machinery in the world, and selling Philadelphia-made farm 
implements to every important country in the world.] 




Plate VIII. Two-Row Pivot Wheel Cultivator, Plow, Furrower and Ridger. 

Equipment: Fourteen 2^^ x 8 in. cultivator steels; Two pairs reversible 7-in. plows; 

Two 8-inch shovels ; Two pairs plant guards ; Spring lift. 



Truck Farming in Philadelphia County 



11 




Plate IX. Potato Digger. 




Plate X. Hill and Drill Seeder, Wheel Hoe, Cultivator and Plow Combined. 

Equipment: One pair 6 inch hoes. Three steel cultivator teeth. Large garden plow (all oil tempered) ; 

Improved double leaf guard ; One marker ; 16K inch steel wheel. 




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Truc 



K Farming in Philadelphia County ®®" ^28 808 9 



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Plates XI. Combination Farm and Garden Horse Hoe, Cultivator, Furrower, Plow and Vine Turner. 

Equipment : Three 3x8 inch cultivator steels ; One pair 6 inch hillers ; One plow attachment , One 15 inch 

fingered sweep ; One 10 inch furrower ; 1 vine turner, lever expander and lever wheel. 



EDUCATIONAL PAMPHLETS 

ISSUED BY THE 

PHILADELPHIA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 



PURPOSE — To make Philadelphia's life, industry, history, and 
government known, understood and appreciated by all its citizens. 



No. 1. Thrift— a short text-book 

No, 2, The Trust Companies of Philadelphia 

No. 3. The Rug and Carpet Industry of Philadelphia 

No. 4. The Locomotive Industry in Philadelphia 

No. 5. Truck Farming in Philadelphia County 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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